PT Travel Linkfest (China edition) for 20 Nov 2008

One morning in Beijing on the China 2.0 Tour, I grabbed a selection of newspapers as our group gathered at the gorgeous Marriott City Wall hotel, and I thought I’d share some tidbits from my haul since many PT blog readers may not have easy access to papers like the China Daily.

The South China Morning Post had a very interesting article about a Dutch man, Sebastian Straten, who is pursuing his dream of a guest house business in Iran. The link to it doesn’t have the whole article (silly! but I did find the full article in the Brunei Times.) I liked this quote:

“His guiding principle is simple: it is better to be among the first foreigners investing in Iran’s nascent tourism industry than a latecomer in nearby Dubai, the Gulf’s commercial hub – especially during a financial crisis….Iran sees tourism as a priority and wants to invest more than US$30 billion in the sector over the next two decades, according to Iranian media.”

They’re building a high-tech urban planning vision for book nuts about 30 km north of Seoul, South Korea: Paju Book City. For more, see this Bloomberg article.